BEIJING: Once the fruit of choice in royal households, watermelons nowadays can be found in even the most humble homes in China.
The fruit’s popularity has soared over the years, and online grocer Meituan reported that sales of watermelons on the platform had increased sixfold from 2020 to 2022, triggering increasingly high demand for watermelon quality testers like Malaysian expat Lee Jun Kang.
Lee, 32, is extremely busy in the summer months. Just by holding the fruit near his ear and knocking on the rind with his knuckles, Lee says he can tell by the sound if the fruit is ripe enough to be eaten or not.
Lee, who works for a rural cooperative set up by a group of watermelon farmers on the outskirts of Beijing, puts thousands of watermelons through the “knock test” daily, before the fruits are shipped to warehouses in downtown Beijing from where Meituan sources its supplies.
“August is a hot season for watermelon sales, and I check more than 10,000 fruits each day,” he said. “When my knuckles grow numb, I just switch to the other hand.”
Data from Meituan showed that watermelon sales peak in the hottest months of July and August, when more than 100,000 watermelons are delivered through the platform each day. The miniature varieties of the fruit accounted for 38.4 percent of total sales on Meituan last year, about 10 percent higher than in 2020. –The Daily Mail-China Daily exchange item
